As many of you have, we have a route we take every day to school in the morning, then follow the route in reverse from school to home. It’s part of the daily routine. It takes about 15 minutes to get to school, 30 minutes round trip. That’s if there is only one trip that day.
Yesterday, I made three trips to school and back. At the moment we only have one car. So, my daughter had morning basketball practice. I dropped her off and returned home to get the rest of the crew for school. At the end of the day we went home, then to my junior high daughter’s game in a nearby town. After her game we returned home, but I had to go out to school to get my other daughter who was making sugar skulls for her Spanish Club.
We finally settled down at home after 8 o’clock last night.
It got me thinking about how many times I have traveled the streets from home to school and back again.
So, being conservative (I did not include summer or holiday breaks or even weekends when I come to my classroom to grade.) I calculated some numbers.
We have lived in our home for about 12 years. My oldest son started junior high around that time. In those 12 years… again conservative numbers.
I have traveled 33,000 miles on just that route.
Adding up the time… 84 days traveling that route! If I started driving back and forth from home to school to home without stopping today, I would drive that route continually until Jan 31, 2024.
It’s been a hard year. Even now my wife’s side of the family is dealing with another tragic moment. Time and the importance of my life have been factors that trouble my soul, but as I thought about this small moment, driving to school, I realized two things.
One: Life happens in the smallest moments. Singing songs, laughing at my bad dad jokes, venting about a bad day, getting a blueberry muffin at the coffee shop as a surprise, all these moments are the moments that weave the fabric of my life. The quality of my day is elevated in this routine. The bonds with my children and my wife are built in these small moments.
Two: There are no throw away moments in life. Our daily life has routines that fill lots of time, usually in small chunks. But it adds up. To be honest, this was something I thought about as I listened to my dad talk about mom at her graveside. How a life is not defined by the big moments. A life is the individual strands of yarn we weave together to make a tapestry of living. If we do it well, others can find warmth and comfort by wrapping it around their shoulders.
Today, we only have two trips to make. I have some new dad jokes to tell during the trip.
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